“I think gay guys like weddings more than anyone. And it’s not because we want to destroy marriage, like some people say. It’s because we really, really want to get married!”

Russel Middlebrook is gettin' hitched!

The wedding is taking place in a remote lodge on an island in Puget Sound. Russel and his husband-to-be have invited all their close friends to spend the whole weekend together beforehand.

And for the first time in his life, Russel is determined to not be neurotic, and not over-think things.

But that's before things start going wrong. Who expected a dead killer whale to wash up on the beach below the inn? And what's this about a windstorm approaching? Then there's the problem of Russel's anxious fiancé, who is increasingly convinced the whole thing is going to be a disaster.

Meanwhile, the wedding is taking place near the ruins of a small town, Amazing, where, a hundred years earlier, the people supposedly all disappeared overnight. Why does it feel like the secret at the end of the road to Amazing has something to do with Russel's own future?

Can Russel's friends Min, Gunnar, Vernie, and Otto somehow help him make it all make sense?

The Road to Amazing, the third book in the Russel Middlebrook Futon Years series, is a story about endings and beginnings, and also about growing up and growing older. But mostly it's a story about love and friendship—about how it's not the destination that makes a life amazing, but the people you meet along the way.

Praise for Brent Hartinger:

“Hits the narrative sweet spot."— NPR's All Things Considered

"Downright refreshing."— USA Today

"The most artful and authentic depiction of a gay teen since [19780]."— Horn Book Magazine

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Product Description

“I think gay guys like weddings more than anyone. And it’s not because we want to destroy marriage, like some people say. It’s because we really, really want to get married!”

Russel Middlebrook is gettin' hitched!

The wedding is taking place in a remote lodge on an island in Puget Sound. Russel and his husband-to-be have invited all their close friends to spend the whole weekend together beforehand.

And for the first time in his life, Russel is determined to not be neurotic, and not over-think things.

But that's before things start going wrong. Who expected a dead killer whale to wash up on the beach below the inn? And what's this about a windstorm approaching? Then there's the problem of Russel's anxious fiancé, who is increasingly convinced the whole thing is going to be a disaster.

Meanwhile, the wedding is taking place near the ruins of a small town, Amazing, where, a hundred years earlier, the people supposedly all disappeared overnight. Why does it feel like the secret at the end of the road to Amazing has something to do with Russel's own future?

Can Russel's friends Min, Gunnar, Vernie, and Otto somehow help him make it all make sense?

The Road to Amazing, the third book in the Russel Middlebrook Futon Years series, is a story about endings and beginnings, and also about growing up and growing older. But mostly it's a story about love and friendship—about how it's not the destination that makes a life amazing, but the people you meet along the way.

Praise for Brent Hartinger:

“Hits the narrative sweet spot."— NPR's All Things Considered

"Downright refreshing."— USA Today

"The most artful and authentic depiction of a gay teen since [19780]."— Horn Book Magazine

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Amazon.com:
4.7 out of 5 stars
28 reviews

Jason Kamb

5.0 out of 5 starsThank you!

8 February 2018 - Published on Amazon.com

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For years I have been reading through the journey of Russel Middlebrook and his friends and lovers. Like Russel and Kevin it has been an off and on relationship; it's not because I don't enjoy reading the books, because I do; it's because it is always sad to have the books come to an end. It has been a 15 year relationship though instead of 10.

I still remember the first time I read Geography Club, I bought it during an amazing hockey road trip from Everett, WA to Kelowna, BC in April 2004. I bought the paperback version at the local Canadian bookstore. My best friend and I were both reading books by the water near the arena while waiting for the playoff hockey game to start. It was a beautiful day and I couldn't stop reading it.

Over the years I have laughed and cried while reading this series, but this by far was my favorite Russel book, and that says a lot. Like Russel's life mine has changed over the past 15 years; in March 2016 I moved out of the beautiful State of Washington for the first time, my best friend passed away from cancer March 2017, and I've gotten older and trying to fight being a single grumpy old man.

What hasn't changed is my love for Brent Hartinger's novels. There hasn't been one I haven't enjoyed. Thank you for writing and cheers to the next book in the journey.

5.0 out of 5 starsThe latest, and most powerful, of all the Russel Middlebrook stories.

21 April 2016 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

Amazing doesn’t exist anymore, but the overgrown road that leads to its ruins is still here. It is also a metaphor, lyrically and beautifully woven into the fabric of this story.

Less trauma-filled than Brent Hartinger’s last book about the grown-up Russel Middlebrook and his boyfriend Kevin Land, “The Road to Amazing” is a thoughtful consideration of what friendship, marriage, and love really mean, wrapped up in an “I Love Lucy” episode. As always, it is well-written, and Russel Middlebrook’s voice—which we’ve all known since he was in high school—is steady and familiar and, in this instance, remarkably wise.

What purports to be the story of Russel and Kevin’s wedding weekend is really the ultimate story of Russel coming to grips with what being an adult, and embracing an adult life, really is. Things go comically wrong, and Russel, as the narrator, acknowledges his audience consistently throughout the narrative, to assure us that he knows what’s going on. This, at least for me, afforded a cozy intimacy with Russel (and hence the author) that drew me into the book emotionally more than any of the previous volumes.

The big point of this touching and amusing installment in Kevin and Russel’s life together is the meaning of marriage itself; marriage in the context of two twenty-five-year-old gay men who have known each other since middle school. Set in a beautiful modern house in an idyllic bluff on Vashon Island, the sit-com plot is really nothing more than a framework that helps us understand various important people who have been part of Russel and Kevin’s lives through the entire series of books: Gunnar the nerd genius, Min the political-activist bisexual, Otto the burn survivor turned TV star, Vernie, Hollywood screenwriter and Russel’s mentor. Two outsiders, Min’s girlfriend Ruby and Kevin’s straight college roommate Nate, make up the intimate group staying in the house before the wedding, and also provide contrast and depth as Russel ponders the importance of friendship and personal growth.

What made this book particularly appealing to me—beyond my being a fan of Hartinger’s writing—is that, at 58, I found myself in the same position as Kevin and Russel, who could be my sons. After 38 years with the same man, who I met in college, we were finally allowed to marry in 2013 in New Jersey. The significance of an institution that had hitherto been denied us in spite of our shared citizenship with every other American, was very much on our minds as we made our way to our town hall where the mayor would perform a brief ceremony and sign our license. We claimed, when asked, that it was not a momentous occasion, but rather a purely practical step in terms of wills and estates and the future of the two children we adopted as babies two decades ago. But we knew it was something rather more than that. Russel and Kevin come to realize this, too, and that new understanding of their wish to be married transforms Hartinger’s book into something bigger, deeper, and more moving.

5.0 out of 5 starsfunny, topical and germane to the character development

3 March 2016 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

This novel is a satisfying final broadside for the set of 7 novels that make up the Russel Middlebrook chronicles. The novel brings together the major ongoing characters of the series - Russel, Kevin, Min, Gunnar, Otto and Vernie - for a fateful, amusing, and crisis laden weekend on Vashon Island. The crises are imaginative, funny, topical and germane to the character development. But like the battles scenes in the Lord of the Rings movies, they just keep on a coming - they only lack Legolas's presence to work a tie in perfectly. In Russel's narration the crises display the imaginative flair for metaphor, charmingly quirky behavior, and general good spirits that Russell has always shown. However, the direct addresses to the reader have a self-conscious rhetorical stance that is not new (Russel always addresses his readers directly at least a few times in every novel) but is used much more frequently and polemically here.

Hartinger pulled out a fair number of compositional stops here to conclude his Middlebrook novels with a generous spirited, kind, and original (it is Russel narrating after all), flourish. Russel has maintained his political views (fortunately) and has begun to articulate them in more exasperated terms. Further, he expands his range of targets and gives some home truths (in his view) about religion, environmental regulators, caterers, Australians, and others. But while the articulated concerns voiced by Russel continue to be endearingly goofy, pithy, and trenchant, but basically kind, some of the literary devices used are funny but not unduly subtle - the Episcopalians and their infrastructural architecture come to mind. My first composition teacher had a phrase ("it is cute, very cute, too cute. Frankly it has GOT to go") that is to some degree relevant here as some of the metaphors, images, and allegories (?maybe?) have an "everything AND the kitchen sink flavor. However, Russel has always been like that, as a character, and as this is his last hurrah, it is actually an illustration as to how a really good writer can break the rules and make things better as a result. Go Russel.

The most important accomplishment, perhaps, is the portrayal of the strength, intelligence, affection, commitment, and generous spirited nature of the love between Russel and Kevin. It is plausible; convincingly depicted with depth, accuracy, honesty, and obviously based in life experience. Further, it has an attribute that is rarely seen in gay literature, movies, etc (in my experience of it). That is a depiction of fondness. Kevin and Russel love each other alright, but they also like each other, and are deeply fond of each other as being totally lovable human beings. One gets love, lust, commitment, etc. in plenty in gay art and literature, but rarely fondness - scenes in Shelter between Zach and his partner, and between Brody and Miles in 10 Year Plan do this well - Michael Adam Hamilton deserves some sort of award for the scenes where his character's fondness for Miles is presented in a well crafted and convincing form) as does Trevor Wright for Zach's commitment in Shelter. But in many cases one wonders what the characters depicted as loving each other would do on a quiet weekend - one can't see Aaron Davis enjoying an afternoon at home with Christian. So this is a welcome achievement in literature with gay characters - I think. Probably many people know of many other examples, but I don't.

As the character that I most identified with in the series was Brian Bund, I was sorry to find that he doesn't make an appearance - at least as an historical update - now a professor at MIT sort of thing - in this last novel. But this is my most serious reservation and it is pretty superficial.

I think fans will be quite happy with this conclusion to the series - the last image is a multi-layer triumph, creating a satisfying assurance as to Russel and Kevin's destiny together, while definitely closing the series for good and all in a benevolent way.